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By Aryne Sheppard, Manager of Community Leadership

The David Suzuki Foundation's current book club selection is called Climate Cover-Up. It is essential reading for anyone wanting to understand why, despite profound scientific consensus, the reality of climate change is still up for debate.

You can read the first chapter to learn how the climate debate is a public relations creation.

In the chapters that follow, Jim Hoggan (with journalist Richard Littlemore) explores how individuals, organizations, and industries with vested interests have worked to create the bogus controversy around global warming.

Here are some Canadian facts you should know:
• Canadian oil and gas companies siphoned hundreds of thousands of dollars to a climate change denial campaign through both the Calgary Foundation and the University of Calgary to hide the corporate connection to an Astroturf (fake grassroots) organization called the Friends of Science.
• When a flock of birds landed - and died - in an Alberta tar sands tailing pond, the oil companies insisted it was the only such incident, a claim undermined by company policies to fence and patrol its property, preventing access from environmental observers and academics working to study the devastated landscape.
• When an Alberta doctor diagnosed the breakout of a rare cancer in a downstream community, the Alberta government dismissed the report out of hand.
• And as negative stories began to take hold, the Alberta government continued to ignore both the duck deaths and cancer rates, choosing instead to add $25 million to its budget to pursue a public relations campaign arguing that the tar sands are environmentally benign.

Please take the time to read Climate Cover-Up seriously and thoughtfully, and then pass it on. As Canadian citizens, it is our responsibility to understand where our true interests lie.

Join the David Suzuki Foundation Book Club and join the conversation.